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One of the most intriguing things about language is its redeployment to accomplish a multiplicity of functions by different people in different places at different times. One of such functions of language is humour- making. People often make use of humour in social, political and cultural interactions through the skillful manipulation of diverse structures of language. Underlining the manipulative skills of a speaker or language user are peculiar and unique choices that are made. These choices are explainable by studying the linguistic style of the language user. To do this, stylistics, therefore, is an instrument with which style can be effectively studied. As a result, this research sets out to examine how and whether syntactic items can be used stylistically to achieve humour. Since analysis must be based on a particular linguistic theoretical construct, this study adopts functional linguistics as a theoretical mainstay for analysis. Since this theory offers a broad spectrum for analysis, the study further narrows down specifically to transitivity as presented in Halliday (1985). Terminologies such as “participants, processes, circumstances” and their sub-types are used in classifying syntactic items. At the end of the analysis, it is discovered that interactants make a predominant use of “processes- the material process” to create humour. This is because an entity has to do something on another for humour to be possible. However, the “processes”, which usually contain “participants”, are complimented by different “circumstances” to contextualise the utterance for humour. The completeness of the humour lies with the relationship between shared knowledge and the lexical choices of interactants. This shared knowledge connects the syntactic choices a speaker makes to context, resulting into humour.

CHAPTERONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0BackgroundtotheStudy

Natural language contains systematic variations on all levels of its structure, such as

diverse means of communicating their thoughts, feelings and emotional concerns to others.

Through the instrumentality of language, humans can pass information by means of humour.

Therefore, it is a natural phenomenon for humans to laugh at jokes, exchange humorous

stories for entertainment and information, tease one another and trade clever insults for

amusement on a daily basis. Raskin (1985:2) opines that:

Responding to humour is part of human behaviour, ability or competence, other parts of which comprise such important social and psychological manifestations of homo sapiens as language, morality logic, faith e.t.c

To Raskin, humour is an inextricable part of human nature. This goes further to

suggest that no human society exists without humour, since it is a part of human behaviour.

This behaviour (humour) is manifested in different forms to different people, settings and

situations. This is true because what becomes humorous may be highly restricted to a

particular group, culture and possibly experience. Raskin (1985:16) buttresses this point by

positing that “it seems to be generally recognized that the scope and degree of mutual

understanding in humour varies directly with degree to which the participants share their

social background”.

Raskin‟s position shows that humour is, for example, steeped in and shaped by

culture. What may be interpreted as humour in one cultural setting may be capable of

eliciting anger and violence in another. The sum total of the experiences we commonly share

as unified members of a homogeneous culture is the conducive premise for jokes, humorous

observations, puns, e.t.c.

2

Equally important in Raskin‟s position is the social background which may take into

account other variables like social situation and social setting. A given utterance, which may

be celebrated as humorous in one situation, is likely to be taken with scorn in another